Authors: Beth Williamson
With the amount of blood the wounded man had lost, there was no chance he would survive. He bled profusely, enough to soak through John’s shirt. Fuller Gates was dying.
“Sheriff, I’m canceling the bounty on John Malloy. There is a letter in my desk inside explaining it all. He is an innocent man.” Fuller coughed, blood spraying from his mouth, along with a pink foam.
Frankie put her arm around Phoebe, knowing the poor thing didn’t understand what she did or what was happening. If she lost her own father, it would destroy Frankie, the pain would be intense and everlasting. She would comfort the girl as best she could.
“Pa?” Phoebe shook her father’s shoulder. “Pa?”
Fuller had slipped away so quietly no one noticed but his daughter. Frankie squeezed her and pulled her up.
“He’s gone,
ma petite
. Let us go wash up.”
Phoebe twisted away, her expression horrified. “He’s dead? He can’t be dead. Who killed him?” She glanced at her hands, and when she looked at Frankie, there was a moment of lucidity when the girl knew exactly what she’d done.
“Come inside. You can show me where the soap and water is.” Frankie held out her hand, which was covered in Fuller’s blood too.
Phoebe broke into tears and backed away, looking every inch a little girl too deep in a situation that frightened her. “I want Pa.”
“He is gone, Phoebe. Please come with me.” Frankie kept her hand extended, hoping the girl would take it.
While the men stood around, shuffling their feet and acting uncomfortable with the madness of a child. She stepped closer and Phoebe jumped a foot in the air.
“
No!
” Before Frankie could stop her, she ran for the bloody knife on the dusty ground and snatched it up in mid-stride.
“Sweet Jesus.”
She wasn’t sure who said it, but it didn’t matter. They all stood there like fools and watched a young girl who never had a chance to live take her own life. Phoebe slit her own throat and dropped to the ground. Frankie’s heart broke for the Gates family and all they lost with the madness Phoebe could not have controlled without help.
Frankie dropped to her knees beside the girl and pulled her limp body onto her lap. As the daughter of a nurse, she knew there was no chance she could save her. Phoebe had severed both main arteries and blood gushed from her neck in a river of red. The heat from her body almost scorched Frankie’s hands. She tried to apply pressure to the wounds, but the blood flowed with urgency. The young girl’s life drained to the ground with each beat of her heart.
“Oh,
cherie
, I am so sorry.” Frankie wept for the girl who never had a chance to live, to kiss a boy, to fall in love. She never intended for anyone’s death, much less both Fuller and Phoebe. The coppery smell of blood invaded Frankie’s nose, choking her until she could only suck air in through her mouth. Even then, she tasted it.
Frankie kept her gaze locked with Phoebe until the life extinguished from her beautiful blue eyes. She was aware of everyone’s eyes on her, watching and waiting like a murder of crows awaiting carrion.
John put his hand at her back. “Is she gone?”
“Yes, she is gone.”
He sighed, long and hard. “Shit. Poor thing. I’ll get the boys started on building coffins. There’s a family cemetery just beyond the house. I’m sure he’d want them buried beside his wife.” His voice was husky with emotion and regret.
“I am sorry, John. So sorry.” She met his gaze. “I did not mean for this to happen.”
John kissed her forehead. “It was like a stick of dynamite with a long fuse, burning for a while but bound to explode eventually. Fuller ignored it for too long. You have no blame in this.”
“I provoked her.” Frankie cried harder, tears streaming down her cheeks to land in the bloody mess of a young girl in her arms. The dog sat beside her, his eyes full of sorrow. Her heart ached for all she had seen, and her role in the Gates’ deaths.
“You tried to save us, there’s no shame in that. I was going to do something to make Fuller admit she had a problem, but you did it before me.” He rubbed her back with his big hand. “After Elias gets back with the doctor, we can get her cleaned up so we can bury them proper. Will you help me?”
Although Frankie wanted to sit there feeling sorry for herself and weep for the tragedy she’d witnessed, she wasn’t one to allow self-pity for long. Life was precious, a gift not to be squandered. She would honor them by cleaning them for burial and dressing them in their Sunday best. No matter how they died, the Gates family deserved honor and respect.
“Yes, I will. Can you take her?”
John kissed her forehead and whispered, “
J’taime, cherie
.”
It wasn’t the ideal time for it, but he had just admitted he loved her. Frankie wanted to start crying again. If nothing else came of the day of blood and loss, they had their love. That, for now, would have to sustain her.
Chapter Nine
“I suppose I ought to let you go.” Sheriff Everett stared as John dug graves beside several of the ranch hands. The doctor had come and gone, after helping to stitch up the Gates for viewing. Frankie was left in charge of washing them for burial while the men prepared their final resting place. It was a dark day and made even darker by the bastard sheriff who scuttled around like a cockroach.
“I told you I was innocent. Now you have a dying man’s confession.” John wiped his forehead on his sleeve. “He was protecting his daughter, nothing more.”
“You still owe me for the damage to the jail. I am going to bring you in for that if I can’t get you for murder. I’ve got five men who will haul your ass in whole or broken.” Everett, the lousy son of a bitch, was single-minded.
“How much?” John plunged the shovel into the ground and put his hands on his hips to face the bastard. “How much to pay for the damage?”
There were a few ways his offer could have gone, but he had to try to bribe the man. He was the last thing standing between freedom and a life on the run from a loco sheriff and his foolish posse.
“Well now, you pulled down both iron bars, so we’ll need to rebuild the walls back there with sod, which is hard work.” Everett stroked his jaw, his gaze sharp and intelligent. The man was far more dangerous than others because he wasn’t stupid. Far from it.
“Enough of this shit. Tell me how much for you to leave and never come back.” John held his temper with every ounce of self-control. The other men had stopped digging to watch the conversation, which was fine with John. The more witnesses he had to the deal the better.
“Two hundred dollars.”
The sum was enormous. More than that, it was nearly everything he had saved to start his ranch. It would leave him penniless and throw his future into a deep, dark hole. His stomach heaved.
“That’s a fortune.”
“Spending your days in a jail costs more.” Everett smiled, full of nothing but avarice and greed.
John wanted to punch him until he stopped being a jackass. Unfortunately, John would have to kill him to make that happen. A bad notion for a man who was trying to rid himself of a murder charge.
“If I give you two hundred dollars, you will sign a paper releasing all of us from any charges, including the damages, murder charge and bounty. And I mean all of us—me, Frankie Chastain and Declan Callahan. All of us.” John’s heart cracked at the thought he was going to give up his dream. He told himself it was temporary, that he could start saving money again, but he knew it was more than temporary. It had taken a lot of blood, sweat and tears to earn that much. Finding the wherewithal to begin again would be difficult, if not impossible.
“I can agree to that. I’ll give you a day to bury your, ah, friend, then I expect the money. I’ll have the paper written up so’s you can sign it.” Everett touched the brim of his hat and walked away, John’s dreams trampled beneath the heels of his pointy-toed boots.
John wanted to puke.
“That man is a jackass,” Elias offered. The foreman was someone who could recognize his own kind. “I wouldn’t give him a red cent, Malloy. What did you do, anyway?”
“It’s not important. But I can’t afford not to pay him. I’ve got to get Frankie back to her family.” He dug the shovel into the soil with his pent-up rage.
“Isn’t she your wife?”
The question knocked John a bit sideways. “Of course she is, but her family is on that wagon train. She was taken—oh hell, it’s a long story. We need to make it back to the wagon train, no matter what.”
And he would need the pay from Buck for this trip, that was a certainty.
Elias shrugged one big shoulder. “Suit yourself. If Fuller were here, he’d kick that piece of shit off his property. Nothing worse than a dirty man of the law.”
The mention of Fuller made things worse. John had made his peace with his former boss and friend, but if he hadn’t come to the ranch, the other man wouldn’t be dead. Neither would his sixteen-year-old daughter. John wanted to give the man the respect and dignity he deserved, not more violence because he didn’t want to give into blackmail. No, he would pay Everett, get the signed document, then use whatever he had left to buy a horse and gear for Frankie.
It was almost time to leave his past behind. This time for good.
Frankie did an amazing job of cleaning up Fuller and Phoebe and dressing them for viewing and burial. It was a solemn group that carried the coffins in the house. The ranch hands lowered the bodies gently and reverently into the pine boxes. After only five minutes of viewing, Elias took over and sealed them up. It was the right thing to do—no one wanted to see the two who were alive twelve hours earlier, now dead in a bloody end they couldn’t have predicted. Elias nailed the coffins closed, then the men carried them back out of the house to the waiting wagon.
John took Frankie’s hand, her eyes wide and solemn. She stood by his side and followed the procession back to the family cemetery, the dog on their heels. There was no preacher available out in the wilds of Kansas to say words over their bodies, as the one in town had passed away and not been replaced. Instead, each man in turn spoke, telling a story, some funny and some harrowing. It was a tribute to Fuller Gates, the man he was, not the wrong choices he’d made.
When it was John’s turn, he could not think of what to say. An awkward silence made his gut squeeze so hard, he tasted yesterday’s supper. Then Frankie spoke.
“Fuller Gates changed John’s life. He gave him the chance to prove himself as a man. More than that, he gave him a home.”
She’d unknotted his tongue with her simple speech, giving him the chance to dig deep and find the words that had been hiding. To his surprise, the dog snuggled up next to him, lending John his support. He might have to like that mutt after all.
“When I got here on the Gates ranch, I was an obnoxious son of a bitch.” A few of the ranch hands chuckled and Elias nodded. “I knew everything there was to know about everything. Stood on a tower twelve feet high, looking down on life. Fuller knocked me off that tower and kicked some sense into my thick head.”
A few more chuckles and nods.
“I’d spent my life trying to prove I was worth something to a man who didn’t care, a man who fathered me but was never an actual father to me. Until I met Fuller, I didn’t know what being a father was. He might have kicked my ass six ways to Sunday, but he taught me how to be a man.” John’s throat tightened up and he had to swallow twice to speak again. “I don’t know who I’d be if I hadn’t met Fuller. He changed my life and my future. I’m sorry this happened to him, he didn’t deserve any of it and neither did Phoebe. Sometimes God ain’t fair and I surely hope Fuller’s up there kicking some ass in heaven.”
The men were quiet as John’s words faded into the quiet blue sky above them. No one, it seemed, had anything to say for Phoebe. The awkward silence stretched on until Frankie, once again, showed what an incredible woman she was.
“Phoebe Gates did not have much of a chance at life. She lost her mother too early and life kept throwing obstacles in her path. Her father loved her more than anything. All of us could only hope for a love so deep. I hope the angels in heaven took her in their wings and she has found the peace she could not find on earth.” Frankie didn’t know the girl, but her eulogy had the ring of truth to it. The men all nodded to her, accepting the wish for their own. Phoebe had been an unfortunate soul, a girl who would never be more than she was.
“Let’s get these folks proper in the ground, fellas.” Elias directed the hands to fill in the graves.
John could not watch. After all he’d seen, he could not bear witness to the dirt thrown on the man who changed his life. Frankie held onto his arm and the dog stayed by his side as they walked back to the house. It was time to pay the good sheriff to get out of his life.
The afternoon air was stale and still, as though the earth had stopped turning, mourning the loss of two souls. John certainly felt the weight of the day’s events on his shoulders. He was glad Frankie was there. More than he would admit to her.
“What did the sheriff say to you?” she seemed to know what he was thinking.
“He wants two hundred dollars to disappear and never come back. Otherwise he’ll arrest us for destroying his jail.” The whole idea of paying the son of a bitch left a bad taste in his mouth.